


fire alarms and losing you

by water_poet



Category: The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad French, Blood, Character Death, F/M, Falling In Love, Mild Smut, Multiple Endings, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, POV Multiple, Self-Reflection, Weddings, not between Fliss and Conrad tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:34:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_poet/pseuds/water_poet
Summary: A sort of love story in 12 parts.





	fire alarms and losing you

**Author's Note:**

> Man of Medan, good story! Bad game!
> 
> Anyway because I'm basic here's a Conrad/Fliss fic 
> 
> Can you believe I wrote an artsy incoherent story wow that never happens lmao

**ii. **  
  
The ship smells like seaweed and dust and her throat hurts. The cold metal bites into her heels and she wonders for a moment when her last tetanus shot was.  
  
It's cold and her breath seems to fog up the air, swirling together with the mist and the dark. The ship groans beneath her, mournful.  
  
"Yeah, me too" she murmurs, running a hand across a set of rivets on the wall. The surface is damp and she pulls her hand away, cold seeping into the grooves of her hands.  
  
She doesn't want to die here.  
  
"Conrad! Alex!" she hisses, her words bouncing off the iron hallways and echoing back into her ears, distant and ghostly.  
  
In the distance, someone screams, hoarse and ragged, but she knows the gas is playing tricks on her mind and she knows the screaming in her head is just the shriek of metal scraping together, making her teeth ache.  
  
And yet the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she forgets to breath for a long moment as she rounds a corner and sees Conrad's body on the ground, pale against the darkness.  
  
She yells and the air smells like copper.   
  
"Conrad?" she murmurs, and he doesn't stir even as she kneels down to roll his body over and his head lolls against the ground. His skin is still warm under her fingertips and she feels a lump in her throat like the world is closing its fist around her and she doesn't know why.  
  
If it had been between him or her, she'd have said herself but as she stares up at the opening above her and the stars peppering the sky she knows he wouldn't have done the same.  
  
"Conrad" she says, voice ragged, and his cloudy eyes stare blankly up at her, the blood near his mouth starting to crack against his skin like face paint.  
  
She sets him down gently and stands, wondering.  
  
She's still wondering when the Duke pulls away hours later, the sun biting down into her shoulders as she watches to ship fades away with Conrad's body. She pictures him on the ocean floor, blue green in the filtered light, hair streaming about his face like seaweed, hands reaching out in a final futile gesture towards the sun.  
  
"_Repose-toi maintenant_" she whispers, just in case he can hear her.

  
**v. **  
  
Her hair is frizzy in the misty air. It clings to her neck like vines, suffocating. She can feel the floor of the ship against the soles of her feet, cool and almost comforting in its solidity.  
  
She's going to make it out of here.  
  
Even if there's a broken boat and a debt on her head back home, it'll be worth it for the sea breeze on her face and the sun-painted sand between her toes.  
  
In the distance, someone screams, and Fliss wastes no time because even as the gas sears her lungs and warps her mind she's not taking any chances, feet pounding against the floor as pinpricks of pain shoot up her ankles.  
  
She finds him halfway up a ladder and she struggles after him.  
  
"Conrad!" she calls, and he flinches, knuckles white against the rungs.  
  
The air is clean and her face is slick with rain and he's staring at her like he might know her, like he's seen her a dream somewhere before.  
  
"Conrad!" she says, the cold air clutching at her throat. "Conrad, it's just me. It's Fliss"  
  
Suddenly he smiles at her, tired and sad, and his eyes are like the sky on a cloudy day and when she throws her arms around him, he smells like cologne and sunscreen and pouring rain.  
  
The others are not far behind and her hand steals into his as if it's got a mind of its own, the grooves of his hands fitting like puzzle pieces to hers.  
  
The Duke pulls away and the freighter fades into the distance, blue green in the reflection of the ocean, flags whipping aimlessly like seaweed caught in currents.

  
**x. **  
  
She's pressed against the wall of the lower deck, hands fisted in the collar of his appalling floral shirt. Her teeth rasp against his collarbone, saltwater and misty air bittersweet on her tongue.  
  
"Beautiful" he says, and she scoffs.  
  
"Don't think I'm just another girl you've managed to snag" she says.   
  
He shrugs, kneeling to suck a bruise onto her hipbone.  
  
"Better if you are, right? Nothing personal" he says.  
  
She snorts and he grins against her cunt, smug and self-assured, but before she can push him away and roll her eyes his tongue is lapping at her and her breath comes out a gasp, head falling back against the wall.  
  
"Fuck!" she hisses, and he hums against her.  
  
She comes on his tongue and when she drags him to his feet to kiss him his lips are like seawater.  
  
"You are beautiful" he says, and there's an earnestness in his eyes that suits him better than all his charming grins and quirked expressions.  
  
She pretends she doesn't care, but that doesn't stop her from coming on her fingers later that night with his name caught between her lower lip and her teeth.

  
**iv.**   
  
It occurs to him he's thirsty.  
  
The sky's been turning gold for the past hour but he doesn't dare retreat into the ship, not now that the cool air feels like freedom.  
  
Another hour passes and his skin is red in the sun. It'd be funny to die of cancer on a ghost ship, he thinks, and laughs until his lower lip splits and his tongue tastes like iron.  
  
Around hour three he dry heaves over the side of the boat and the burnt skin on his cheeks cracks. He cries for the first time in ten years and the future blurs on the horizon.  
  
The coast guards arrive and through his foggy vision he begs them to let him stay and wait, and the drag him to a stretcher, weakly clawing at their arms as he yells his throat raw.  
  
Three guards enter, but no one comes back out. Conrad tosses and turns in the hospital, and his nightmares grow so frequent he has to be moved to a private room so his screams will stop waking his roommate.  
  
The ship ends up lost at sea again.  
  
He doesn't go to the funeral. He doesn't go home. Instead, he pays off the loan on Fliss' boat and sets out. At night, he reads through her old navigation charts and studies currents and seasonal shifts. He waits out storms in the lower decks, wringing his hands.  
  
He's going to find them.  
  
He knows it will probably be the last thing he ever does. But somehow, he doesn't mind.  
  
**viii.   
**  
When he kisses her, there are pennies pressing into his tongue, hot and bitter.  
  
She pulls away, shaking her head. "We're going to die here"  
  
"Yeah" he agrees, and she tastes like beer and saltwater and the sunlight on the sand. 

  
**ix.   
**  
It's noon and they emerge, damp and cold. He's gone, but she scans the deck for him anyway.  
  
This time, she doesn't look back as the Duke sails away. He's not on the ship, she knows. He's somewhere out at sea, pale under the rising sun, birds circling.  
  
Julia doesn't look back either, and Fliss bites her lip and wonders who's to blame.   
  
No one, she thinks, because finding a ghost ship is just bad luck but she can't help the prickle of anger that races up her throat as Julia begins to cry choked sobs into Alex's chest.  
  
There's a familiarity to it, a rhythm like rain on the sapphire water, or the wind in the trees against an amber sunrise as she scrubs barnacles off the Duke's bow.  
  
"Hey" she says to Julia, kneeling. "You okay?"  
  
Julia throws her arms around her like a vice and she smells like the same fancy sunscreen on Conrad so Fliss holds her close because they've both lost someone who didn't mean enough when he was alive.  
  
On shore Julia doubles their initial offer and Fliss walks the group back to the hotel, clutching the check that'll save her boat as her chest keeps aching like there's a rock in her lungs.  
  
"I miss him, too" she tells Julia, and to her surprise they both believe it.  
  
Two days later she hears tell of a body brought to shore by the coast guard and after three hours in the emergency room lobby she sees him, IV stuck in his arm, oxygen mask over his cracked lips, pale as death but alive, _alive_.  
  
"It's a miracle" the doctor tells Julia when she arrives, socks mismatched and hair stuffed into a baseball hat. "He should have died"  
  
He should have but he _didn't_ and it's late at night when he wakes up, and before he can panic, Fliss puts her hand in his.  
  
"It's okay" she says. She says it over and over, when Julia wakes up in hysterics, when the nurses rush in to see what the issue is, when Brad calls to ask where Julia's gone.  
  
"It's okay" she says, when Conrad apologizes again and again for not finding help, for talking in his sleep, for throwing up when he hears seagulls outside the hospital window.  
  
"It's okay" she says, when he wakes up gasping in the dead of night, clutching at his eyes and shaking until she holds him close.  
  
"It's okay" he agrees, and it is.

  
**i.   
**  
They meet in the shack bar a quarter mile off the beach. There's sand and sunscreen under his fingernails and she hates him immediately.  
  
"Hey" he says by her side and her grip on the beer bottle tightens, condensation seeping into the grooves of her hand.  
  
"I'm not interested" she says.  
  
He laughs and the flashing Christmas lights looping through the ceiling paint the curves of his face green and blue and red and gold.  
  
"No? They said you knew the best diving spots" he says, and he isn't trying to hit on her and she should feel relived but she feels something else, like tendrils curling around her neck, tightening their grip until she can only say, "Oh?"  
  
"Yeah. Me and my buds are up here for a little getaway, y'know?" he explains, and she should say no because there's a dozen scruffy rich boys just like him who walk like they own the world but she remembers the letter sitting in her cabin and his eyes are blue like a cloudy sky so she shrugs.  
  
"I'll see what I can do" she says.  
  
She does, and even as she watches him swagger on to the ship, offering her a beer with a sideways grin, she doesn't hate him like she should.  
  
He chatters and he flirts and he flaunts but she's fascinated anyway by the way the corners of his mouth quirk when she speaks and the way he shifts his weight from one foot to the other when he drinks.  
  
"You want a beer?" he asks, the sun glinting against the dark glass, and it doesn't matter what she says because he still laughs and tells her about the time Julia cut his hair in his sleep when they were young.  
  
Maybe it's a good thing the pirates arrive when they do because the beer is getting to her and Conrad's laughter is suddenly just as intoxicating.

  
**vii.   
**  
"I've never seen such a waste of money" she murmurs, tugging at one of her heels. There's a rock in it, but she thinks it would be rude to remove a shoe halfway through the reception.  
  
"I think it's sweet" Conrad says.  
  
"You would" she says, and her teeth hurt.  
  
Weddings are white and lacy and sugary and even if she's grown to love Julia like a sister the whole affair is making her eyes water with the lights and the scented napkins and the flowers.  
  
The music of the live band twists through the air and Conrad grins sideways at her and the fairy lights strung about the tent are golden in his eyes. "You wanna dance?"  
  
She does but her feet hurt and her hair is tugging at her scalp so instead she puts her hand in his and leans on him, heels threatening to sink into the dewy grass.  
  
"You ever dance before?" he asks.  
  
Fliss snorts. "Not like this. This is boring"  
  
He raises an eyebrow. "You trying to liven this place up now?"  
  
"Not with you" she replies, and he only shrugs, and the soft fabric of his suit catches on the callouses over her palms and fingertips.  
  
"Fair enough" he agrees, but it isn't, and the earth beneath her swallows up her left heel and she stumbles into his arms like a storybook maiden and he smells like pine and citrus. He laughs as he rights her and she thinks about kissing him. He stares at her and there's a storm brewing over the Duke just like the one in his eyes, a cloudy day, and she leans into him. She rests her head on his chest and the music hums around them, soothing.  
  
He puts a hand on her cheek and when she kisses him it's warm and right like the sun on the sand.  
  
"Let's get married" Conrad says. "Just like this"  
  
"No" she says, and he laughs firm and young and she doubts she could ever marry him but she loves him all the same.

  
**xi.   
**  
In the toxic air he's older, angrier, like the men on the beach who leer at her as the sun sets and offer her drinks while their hands creep across her shoulders like thick tendrils threatening to suffocate her.   
  
"Fliss" he says, and before she knows what she's doing she's swung the wrench.  
  
It's like thunder and she knows before he's collapsed that he's dead, that she's killed him and the world is upside down.  
  
"Fliss!"  
  
The hollow groan echoes through the ship and she screams, the blood pooling around his skull flickering in and out of her vision.  
  
Her legs give out. The iron grating digs into her knees as she grabs at him. She threads her hands into his hair and blood seeps into the grooves of her hand.  
  
"Conrad!" she says, and his eyes stare blankly back at her like the sky on a cloudy day. "Conrad!"  
  
He's dead and she knows. It's not fair, but she knows that too, and she also knows this boat is a death trap and if she waits she'll be joining Conrad on the rusty floor of the ship.  
  
Then again, she's tired. The air is like salt and dust and it makes her throat tighten and she wants to cry but her lips are cracked and the tears don't come.  
  
The blood has dried and she wonders if she will ever be able to get it out of the spots where it's caked into her shorts and her top.  
  
She thinks back to how this place might have been decades before, with soldiers and nurses and the sound of gulls and foam in the early morning and she wretches as the ship creaks and her lungs taste like pennies.  
  
"Good riddance" she says, closing his eyes and laying his arms over his chest.   
  
"Good riddance" she says, tossing the blood-stained wrench aside after it starts to stick to the caking blood on her hands.  
  
"Good riddance" she says, staring out over the ocean as the Duke sputters away, the foam lapping at the sides of the freighter and she remembers Conrad's crooked grin and she grips her arms tighter around herself, nails biting into her arms.  
  
She never told Julia but Brad knows and he sits with her, silent.   
  
"Good riddance" she mutters, and it's more like a question this time, high and uncertain and aching.  
  
Brad shrugs numbly and she lays back across the cushions, thinking back to the Christmas lights in the bar and the sand and the loan and the way Conrad's eyes shone like a cloudy sky.

  
**vi.   
**  
The spaces where they would have sat yawn empty and cold, and Brad won't look.  
  
Alex passes around the beers and the glass fogs in the humid morning air.   
  
"He wouldn't want us to be sad" Julia says.  
  
"Fliss probably wouldn't either. She isn't - wasn't the mourning type, I think" Alex adds, and they laugh sadly and hold each other and Brad wonders if there was ever a future like that for someone like Conrad and someone like Fliss.  
  
It's a foolish notion, he knows, but they're all fools here so he unscrew the beer and pours it out over the side, amber dissipating into sapphire as the boat speeds towards the shore.

  
**iii.   
**  
The pirates don't come back that evening, or the next. Instead, the coast guard boat wails across the ocean too late to save Julia and Conrad watches as Alex stares at the ring, chest aching. He raises a hand but Conrad grabs his wrist.  
  
"Wait!"  
  
Alex looks and his broken heart is pounding in his throat.  
  
"She's gone" he says. "Julia"  
  
"I know" Conrad replies, and it's a lie because he can't even bear to look yet, still under some desperate illusion that he'll blink and she'll be there, crinkling her nose when she laughs.  
  
"I saw this paper in the cabin" he says. "Fliss has this loan she can't pay. They're going to take her ship"  
  
Alex looks at the ring in his hand. Then he laughs dryly. "Might as well make one woman happy with it" he says, dropping the ring into Conrad's hand.  
  
In another life he'd have made a joke about his not being a girl but in this one all he can think of is Fliss.  
  
"Here" he says, and she stares as he presses the ring into her hand.  
  
"No" she insists, but he shakes his head.  
  
"You can pay off the loan or you can put that in the sea" he tells her, and he has no energy for bitterness.  
  
Fliss bites her lip.  
  
"Alright" she says, and the silver band glints amber in the light against the sapphire stone as it sits in between the grooves of her palm.

  
**xii. **  
He's golden on the horizon, wind blowing his hair, lips curled in a self-assured smirk, and she knows she should hate him but she doesn't.   
  
His arms are warm around her and she pulls him close like she cares (if she really does, it's nobody's business) and he laughs into her hair.  
  
"Good to see you, too" he says, and before she can say everything and nothing all at once, Julia's tackled him into an embrace, squealing, and Fliss can only watch and laugh and feel her heart twist strangely when Julia slips her fingers through Alex's.  
  
She takes the beer when he offers it this time as the boat roars away into the sunrise like a white horse and even if they're nothing yet, he puts a hand around her waist and she lets him, just this once.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably be back for Little Hope cuz I love Will poulter


End file.
